Decatur Historic Union Depot
& Railroad Museum

The Depot was Alabama Main Street’s 2015-2016 Historic Preservation Project of the Year. The historic Decatur union passenger depot was built by the Southern Railway in 1905. It is a symbol of the city’s rich railroad heritage which extends back to the 1830s when the first railroad west of the Allegheny Mountains, Tuscumbia, Courtland, and Decatur was built. A union depot was the result of the joint use of the depot by two railroads, the Southern and the Louisville & Nashville railroads.

City of Decatur

Before the outbreak of the American Civil War, the Memphis & Charleston (present-day Norfolk-Southern) and what would later become the Louisville & Nashville (L&N, present-day CSX) Railroads intersected at Decatur, making the city strategically important during the war. In 1889, the L&N Railroad established repair facilities in Decatur that employed 2,500 people and helped to spur a tremendous population growth after 1900. In 1905, during what railroad historians have termed the "Golden Age of Railroad Travel," a new railroad depot was built by the Southern Railway in Decatur, replacing two facilities inadequate for the increasing amount of railroad traffic into the area. The new depot became known as Union Depot because it was used both by Southern Railway and the L&N. It was most likely designed (or at least overseen by) Kentucky-born Frank Pierce Milburn, one of the most famous architects in the South, who served as the chief architect for the Southern Railway. Decatur is believed to be his only design in Alabama. Planned in the Spanish Revival style, the building includes bricks painted white with quoins (pronounced "koyns"), or decorative corner pieces, and a rectangular central section with a hipped roof and two narrower wings which include gabled roofs. The main entrance is covered by a porte-cochere with arched openings.

Encyclopedia of Alabama

The new Decatur Union Depot Museum was developed under the guidance of city historian David Breland and focuses mainly on the area's railway heritage. Exhibits include model trains and train sets, railroad-related artifacts, and graphic panels that tell the history of rail service in the area dating back to the 1830s. The lobby of the museum includes a number of scenes and artifacts from Decatur businesses of the early 1900s that surrounded the depot. The main museum artifact room includes the original ticket office and a model train layout depicting Decatur along with artifacts and railroad signage. It also contains benches and the superintendent's desk from the original Union Depot and a depot desk from the Tuscumbia, Colbert County, depot from the 1920s. The museum also includes a theater that contains artifacts such as antique toy trains and railroad tools as well as audio/video presentations on Decatur's railroads. Behind the depot is the original, though renovated, loading dock that includes an original 1905 baggage cart and a number of artifacts.

Encyclopedia of Alabama / image RWH